I had lived in a 3 bedroom house which I’D rented close to the campus of my college.  It was quite Exy but most places were these days so I stuck it out.  One night while driving cabs (a student staple) a Greek chef at this café we all went to told me his half-house flat was available, and it was about a third the rent of the house, so of course I grabbed it.

Over the next week I moved in with daily car trips, and my then neighbor and his *Ute, we moved all my belongings into my new ‘Flat’. I spent a couple of days getting everything set and when I was comfortable I decided to go and introduce myself to the neighbour, who was actually the son of the afore-mentioned Greek chef.  He was a musician and he had a band etc so we had music in common at least.  Now for some reason, he figured he didn’t like Aussie or Greek girls but he wanted an exotic girl from one of the Pacific Islands and he’d gone to the Melanesian Islands, married an Islander and brought her to live here in Australia with him.  Everyone was happy for him as he had found his love and was happy.  I had seen her drive into the back yard where we all parked but she never spoke to any of us.  The day I was moving in with my former neighbour, I had said in my cheery way “Hi there, I am your new neighbour,” holding out my hand in greeting.  She sneered at me, curled up her lip, as you do, and stormed up the stairs of her half of the house.

It was probably a bad idea to go over and formally introduce myself as the new interloper, er. I mean neighbour, but I did anyway, because I wanted to do some laundry, and couldn’t find the light switch, so I figured, good pretext to knock on their door.

I walked on up the steps and knocked on their back door, “@#$% OFF!” she yells, to which I calmly reply, “Sorry to disturb you, I am your new neighbor,”

“%$#@ OFF!” she says again, but I am persistent if anything,

“Mrs. Wheelbarrow,** look I just want to know where the laundry light switch is.”  “!@#$ OFF!” comes the response again, so I figure, ‘Darn it, I’ll find it myself’, so I told her, “Lady, I know you’re a foreigner and all, but I would expect you to know more than just two words after one year in the country.”  Then silence, then